Total Productive Maintenance

Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a maintenance program which involves a newly defined concept for maintaining plants and equipment. The goal of the TPM program is to markedly increase production while, at the same time, increasing employee morale and job satisfaction.

TPM is focused primarily on keeping machinery functioning optimally by minimizing equipment breakdowns and associated waste.

TPM makes equipment more efficient by,

  • conducting preventative, corrective, and autonomous maintenance
  • mistake-proofing equipment
  • effectively managing safety and environmental issues

TPM seeks to eliminate six major losses that can result from faulty equipment or operation.

1.Costs to Organization
  • Unexpected breakdown losses
  • Results in equipment downtime for repairs. Costs can include downtime (and lost production opportunity or yields), labour, and spare parts.

2. Set-up and adjustment losses
  • Lost production opportunity (yields) that occur during product changeovers, shift change or other changes in operating conditions.

3. Downtime losses
  • Frequent production downtime, which are short in duration and are often difficult to record. As a result, these losses are usually hidden from efficiency reports and are built into machine capabilities.

4. Speed losses
  • Productivity losses when equipment must be slowed down to prevent quality defects or minor stoppages.

5. Quality defect losses
  • Defects due to equipment malfunction or poor performance, leading to output which must be reworked or scrapped as waste.

6. Equipment and capital investment losses
  • Wear and tear on equipment that reduces its durability and productive life span, leading to more frequent capital investment in replacement equipment.

TPM was introduced to achieve the following objectives.

Avoid wastage in a quickly changing economic environment.

Producing goods without reducing product quality.

Reduce cost.

Produce a low batch quantity at the earliest possible time.

Goods send to the customers must be non defective.